It’s probably data quality — labor intensive, behind the scenes stuff.

Good data is like jet fuel. The plane is beautiful and lovingly engineered, and it’s the part that the users actually see. But that gorgeously branded vehicle isn’t going anywhere without some liquid nourishment under the hood.

Kudos to by Ben Bradley at Macon Raine for describing a common phenomenon: focusing on everything but the data. Data quality is about (1) figuring out who we want to talk with (segmentation), then (2) databasing all the important things we know about this customer, so we can reach them with interesting information they might want, and (3) maintaining this data consistently forever.

Here’s what I’d add to Ben’s recommendations about CRM data quality.

• A task you give to interns can get done well, if it’s managed. Position a task to them as menial and unimportant, and why would you think they’d perform it with diligence and integrity? Whether you’re delegating data quality to interns, temps, vendors, or tech savvy staffers, show respect toward the work you’re asking them to do. It’s only unglamorous if you say it is.
• Data integrity isn’t obvious to the uninitiated. Plan to invest quality time with the people who are going to fix and maintain it. Explain what the data is, how the CRM/database technology works, and how the data cleanup will affect your customers and company when the data is used. Give them the nickel tour of relational databases and CRM and data hygiene principles. Consider writing up a list of things that need to be done to the data and how you will test it to see if those things have been done. Chaotic data won’t get better unless the people tasked with organizing it have a frame of reference for what success looks like.
• Don’t pay people to do things that technology can do better. Give your data quality intern(s) some automated tools (or ask them to go find some for you) to do things like remove duplicate records and add/correct ZIP+4.
• Data quality will never be a pay-side activity for sales people. Good sales people, in my observation, don’t deal very well with data quality and are too focused on pay-side activities to become better at it. A worthy experiment: give them a person (on staff or outsourced) who’s good with data and say, “Call or email this person when you learn something new that should be updated in your account/contact data.” If the sales person sees value in what you’re using CRM to accomplish, perhaps that’s incentive enough for them to use the resource.

CRM data doesn’t get better until it meets people who understand and love it.

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